Lessons in Anatomy:

As Eleanor and I approach our first scheduled trip of the project – 3 days in London – we ponder how best to approach such a wide spectrum of research possibilities. Stretching over the arts, literature, anatomy, pathology and medicine, the places to visit, collections to explore and people to meet is not going to be a small feat, but our hunger for knowledge and inspiration is boundless!

We shall be equipped with plenty of writing and drawing materials, cameras, dictaphones and fuel to maintain our energy levels. I anticipate plenty of discussions, if not continuous dialogue responding to what we experience in the museums and galleries, and the ideas that spring from interactions.

As the artist, I will be mainly sketching and photographing to document what I encounter. And for Eleanor as a writer, she’ll be filling pages and pages with streams of written observations and ideas. We both feel that a change of practice would be a challenging yet valuable act, so have agreed to drop tools and try each other’s methods freely throughout the 3 days. As an example, I would like to limit myself to only written words when exploring the medical instruments and artefacts; using emotive language to describe the likely experience of treatment. And Eleanor will try observational drawing to study the jar specimens and preserved bones in the Hunterian Museum.

This exchange of methods will no doubt surface new approaches to researching art and medical collections, and invite one another to experience what it is like to process and communicate ideas through visual and literary forms.

Through my experience of facilitating drawing workshops with medical students in the anatomy lab environment and medical museum, I believe in the values, importance and rewards of drawing and visualisation exercises as effective tools for them to study human material – aesthetically and conceptually – by way of combining conscious thinking with practical experience. I have just submitted a paper abstract for the upcoming conference Collect, Exchange, Display: Artistic Practice and the Medical Museum (London, 6 June 2014) about Anatomised Drawing, which was a drawing workshop I delivered at the Surgeons Hall Museum as part of ‘Art and Anatomy Course: Drawing for Medics’ with Edinburgh University. I continue to question how medical museums can play a role in anatomy education using drawing and visualisation techniques as learning methods, and this project trip will no doubt feed this research.

While art and modern medicine are often considered on opposite sides of the humanities-science divide, art and anatomy have shared a long standing relationship. To be an artist during the Renaissance was, for many, to be an anatomist. Artists and anatomists worked together to investigate the body through dissection, producing images of the body that combined medical knowledge and an artistic vision of humanity’s place in the world. Equally, the human body has long been central to Western art, and in order to represent the body in all its manifestations many artists have studied anatomy. It is this relationship between artistic representation and anatomical study that interests Eleanor and I, from the position of a GP who has revised anatomy to treat the human body, and from the position of an artist who has spent time as an artist in residence in anatomy laboratories.

Visiting London is the perfect place to kick start our research; a capital full of human bodies and beings, and a wealth of history of medicine and anatomy.

And so it begins.

But before Lesson in Anatomy blog dives into sharing experiences, here are its foundations:

Drawing on my 2 years experience as artist in residence (AIR) at Newcastle, Northumbria and Durham University anatomy labs, and success as a multidisciplinary artist working within the fields of medicine, medical humanities and health, I have been awarded the New Collaboration Bursary from a-n to establish an innovative collaboration with Dr Eleanor Holmes; practicing GP, clinical educator and writer (pen name Eliot North).

Together we will investigate the creative potential for collaborative engagement across the visual and literary arts and explore the interface between medicine, health, the arts and humanities through the exchange of experiences as artist and writer, whilst also developing a strong dialogue addressing anatomy and medical education, clinical practice and human health.

The bursary will subsidise valuable time spent exploring each other’s creative disciplines and methodologies – drawing, sculpture, performance, creative writing and teaching – and our specific interests driving our research – anatomy, pathophysiology, medical education, clinical practice and bioethics – to inspire new ideas for joint visual and literary outcomes. It will afford collaborative study in anatomy, medicine, medical art, history of medicine and related contemporary art and literature, visiting University medical schools, medical museums, libraries, art galleries and exhibitions nationwide with the aim of compiling a comprehensive record of research resources for continued study.

I strongly believe this opportunity is crucial to my artistic and professional development at this point in my career. Since 2011, I have been practicing purely on an independent level as a visual artist, conducting research and devising projects with affiliates from medical education and medical humanities, which has involved the development and application of various arts methodologies into anatomy teaching and learning. I feel it’s important to further interrogate this conversation between academic and non-academic disciplines by continuing dialogue with medical institutions, but also reach further out to the professional field of medicine by collaborating with a practicing GP. This aspect of research is absolutely crucial to my interdisciplinary practice if I am to continue to produce high quality (and challenging) artwork that communicates the affairs of medicine, health and what it is to be human to broad audiences. Likewise, I recognise that the literary arts as a humanities subject that study’s human culture, is equally applicable to my artistic investigations; literature has the potential to broaden and enrich my visual ideas. Considering this, I foresee the benefits of collaborating with Eliot North whose methodologies differ from that of me as visual artist, providing a context to shadow, mirror and exchange experiences of working.

Eliot North feels passionately that collaboration with the arts and humanities is essential to public engagement with medicine and health and that a more open dialogue with the creative disciplines is the future of medical education:

“I have always considered the practice of medicine to be an art underpinned by science, and that creativity is integral to the teaching of medicine and clinical practice. I hope both concepts will be communicated to a wider audience through the dissemination of our collaborative work to our artist and writer networks and to the wider public.”

A visual artist collaborating with a writer to explore human health and medicine is strategic and significant; the convergence of visual and literary practices will serve as investigative grounds where two different methods of representation and communication meet, which both I and Eleanor have not previously experienced. The interdisciplinary nature of this artist-writer/GP collaboration affords the prospect of engaging not only with the network of peers within the arts, but also the literary and medical humanities communities. Ultimately, peers from these networks will learn how visual arts and creative writing practices can complement, enhance and challenge each other in communicating the principles of medical humanities, sci-art and public engagement in health and medicine; with the latter also benefitting the wider community in general. In turn, this bridging of disciplines could encourage further collaborations in my network of peers through the sharing of contacts, research, funding, education and methods of interdisciplinary practices, as well as inspiring other artists to look further than their immediate artistic community in terms of collaborators.

Rachael Allen is a visual artist and researcher living and working in Newcastle. Her visual artwork and research explores the interface between human sciences, medicine, anatomy and arts methodologies, practicing under the umbrella of medical humanities as well as unholdng an independent practice,nationally and internationally. The past 2 years, Allen has been artist in residence at Newcastle, Northumbria and Durham university anatomy labs, working on various projects and research developing methods of integrating the arts into anatomy pedagogy as well as perform observational research, delivering findings through academic conferences, exhibitions and publications, nationally and internationally.